keeping it simple

20 June 2014

Every time I sit down to write a blog post I find myself worrying about whether or not you all will actually enjoy it and whether I am accurately portraying my life here in Vanuatu. Everyday is a new adventure that I wish I could share with everyone more than anything. Unfortunately, living three hours by truck (Monday-Friday only) from the closest internet access makes that a little difficult.

There is absolutely no way to articulate exactly what its like to wake up to the cacophony of church bells, roosters and dogs or to have to schedule in time to build a fire when burning a meal. I can’t tell you just how long I contemplate doing laundry because I know that doing laundry means making at least three trips to and from the pump in order to do one load. It would be strange and awkward to put into words just how much I love my bush toilet (aka the pit) or how good it feels to treat myself to boiling some water for my showers on chilly evenings. I can’t take a picture that captures the laughs behind the smiling children or the warmth that took over my heart when two small girls came to my house to show me the puppies they found in the bush on their way to the garden. I wish you could be sitting in my family’s kitchen when my host Dadi just talks and talks about his experiences traveling around Vanuatu for the government and tells me his ideas for how to bring Vanuatu up in the world.

While everyday is a new adventure—from seeing new gigantic crawling insects in my house to learning a new song from the kids at school—it is really the simplicity of my life that I wish I could actually share. Now that I have been living without the comforts of American life for about five months now, I am fully committed to the idea that all people deserve to experience the beauty of a truly simple life. Everyone should have the chance to live in a world where the little things that create stress and anxiety in contemporary American society are not just infrequent, but fail to exist at all.

I never have to worry about being late for anything. If I’m hungry, I walk over to my family’s house and they hand me a mandarin or banana. If I’m tired, I go lay underneath the shade of a large tree and take a nap. When I feel like reading I read and when I feel like eating I cook. I don’t have to worry about when the latest Mac software is coming out or when my contract is ending so that I can get a new phone. I don’t have to worry about missing the season finale of Game of Thrones or Pretty Little Liars—part of this deal was missing a few of those.  I don’t really worry about much at all. If I need something built, I go into the bush with my brothers and cut down some wooden posts and bamboo, grab the saw, hammer and nails and go to work.

Now that I have made it though the first three months at site I am officially allowed to use my vacation days or create projects on other islands that would allow me to travel for work. I just booked flights with friends down to the island of Tanna at the end of October for one of my friend’s birthdays and to climb a volcano on Halloween. After Halloween we will be flying from Tanna to Aneitym—the southernmost island of Vanuatu—to visit my friend Jen and help her complete a world map mural at her school. Exciting things are not far in the future.

Put simply, I live in one of the most incredible places in the world and am pretty happy for the time being. Since its impossible to accurately describe just how much I mean it, you should definitely just come visit.